Mountain Investigation

by Jessica Andersen

  By nightfall, her father had been in the cardiac ICU. By the next day, he’d been undergoing bypass surgery. All because of a not-so-civil servant on a mission to uncover an imaginary conspiracy. In the same vein, Gray had been up on the ridgeline, not to rescue her, but because he’d been suspicious of her. Again.

  She couldn’t trust him, couldn’t lean on him. And she’d do well to remember that.

  Chest aching with a hollow sense of disappointment she knew she shouldn’t feel, Mariah turned to Johnson. “As I said, I’ll cooperate, but I’ve got conditions.”

  “We’ll see.” He gestured to the men flanking her. “Take her inside, let her clean up and call counsel. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  The uniformed cops escorted her to a small, spare room where a pair of paramedics waited for her, equipment at the ready. One was a pretty, light-haired woman with kind eyes; the other an older, heavyset man who looked like he’d rather be napping.

  Mariah held up both hands. “It’s not all that bad, really. Just some cuts on my feet, and a pellet-burn on my calves.” And a hell of a headache, and some serious room spins, thanks to the residue of whatever Lee and Brisbane had been pumping into her system. When she listed it like that, she started to feel worse by the second.

  The light-haired woman shook her head apologetically. “We’ll treat your injuries, for sure. But first the CSIs want to collect your clothes and photograph you. We’ll need a blood sample, too.”

  Two and a half years earlier, Mariah would have—and had—done whatever the cops had asked. Older and wiser now out of necessity, she said, “Then I’m going to want to call my lawyer first.”

  She was done being a pushover.

  OVER THE NEXT EIGHTEEN hours, Gray fought to get himself put back on the case and lost, fought to keep his active-duty status and lost that battle, too. Johnson was furious that he’d disobeyed orders. More importantly, the SAC was embarrassed that Gray’s breach of protocol had yielded a badly needed break in the case. As far as Johnson was concerned, the new intel didn’t cancel out Gray’s insubordination, not after he’d been specifically warned to stay away from Mariah.

  Those conversations took place in snatches, amid the information storm that followed the new developments. The response team reported back with little new information from the cabin, and the infrared helicopter sweeps failed to turn up anything but wildlife and a few hardy preseason campers up on the ridgeline. There was no sign of Lee Mawadi or the other man, whom Mariah hadn’t yet identified from among al-Jihad’s known associates. More, although Mariah was convinced Lee had tried to question her, and had called al-Jihad for help when she’d proven resistant, she claimed to have no idea what they wanted from her.

  It was possible that the forthcoming detailed forensic analysis of the cabin might yield some clue as to where the terrorists were going, where they’d come from or what they wanted with Mariah. However, it would be days at the earliest—more likely weeks—before the relevant clues were teased out from among the normal detritus of a lived-in home. The Bear Claw crime scene analysts were excellent, and had strong ties to the federal investigators, but they weren’t miracle workers.

  Meanwhile, the members of the prison break task force, who had scattered over the past months when the investigation had moved away from Bear Claw, were being reassembled. As before, the investigation would be headquartered partly at the FBI’s Denver field office, partly at the Bear Claw City PD. However, Gray wouldn’t be part of the task force at either location. Johnson had made it crystal clear that he didn’t want to work with a renegade, couldn’t afford to risk a court appeal if one of his agents used questionable methods during an investigation. The SAC had offered Gray a transfer or a desk to ride, but they both knew he wouldn’t take either. The offer had been an empty formality, nothing more.

  Which was why, at just past noon on the day after he’d rescued Mariah and broken the news that Lee Mawadi was back in town, Gray was in his Denver office, packing his personal effects. His service weapon and badge were on the desk, weighting down his letter of resignation.

  He didn’t feel grief at the decision, didn’t feel relief. He felt hollow. Determined. He might be off the task force, but he wasn’t off the case. Not by a long shot.

  He piled his things haphazardly into a box, leaving the official stuff behind and taking only the few items he cared about. The first was a bifold frame containing a picture of his parents and him at his academy graduation a decade earlier on one side, opposite a more recent shot of his whole extended family, cousins and all, taken last Christmas. The latter photo brought a spear of the pain he suspected would always accompany thoughts of the holidays, but he hadn’t let that keep him away from family doings. Christmas was important to his parents, and therefore it was important to him. He’d gone to the annual get-together and pretended to enjoy himself, and had ducked the inevitable questions about his love life, reminding himself that his family members meant no harm. Even though most of them were cops or married to cops, they didn’t fully understand that he had things to take care of before he could move on.

  Thinking of those things, he set the bifold frame in the box and picked up a smaller photo of a laughing man grinning up at the camera, his arms wrapped around a flushed-faced woman who held a small baby.

  “Grayson,” SAC Johnson’s voice barked from the doorway, stanching the impending flood of memories and setting Gray’s teeth on edge.

  Gray didn’t even look over at his soon-to-be-ex boss, just placed the photo in the cardboard box and gestured to the pile of papers on his desk. “The letter of resignation’s right there. Go away.”

  “I want you to reconsider.”

  Of all the things Gray might’ve expected, that didn’t even make the list. Frowning, he turned toward Johnson.

  And saw Mariah standing behind him.

  She looked very different than she had the day before. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders in soft waves, and she wore a green turtleneck sweater, jeans and boots that made her look like a model out of an upscale outdoorsy catalog, simultaneously sexy and practical.

  Although he’d always before gravitated to fussy, feminine women, Gray felt something inside him go very still and hushed, the way it did just before he got the “go” signal on a major op, when his body was poised equally between fight and flight, his blood surging with adrenaline and survival instincts. This wasn’t an op or a fight, he knew, but he had a feeling that if he let it, his association with Mariah could become just as messy. So it was up to him not to let it go there.

  Straightening, he nodded to her. “Mariah.”

  “Gray,” she acknowledged, her expression giving away nothing. She pushed past Johnson, then hesitated just inside the office doorway. “I need to talk to you.” She threw a look over her shoulder and said pointedly, “Alone.”

  Johnson muttered something under his breath, but nodded. He shot Gray a warning look, one that said, “For crap’s sake, don’t screw this up,” then retreated, shutting the door at Mariah’s back.

  A tense, anticipatory silence filled the small room until Gray broke it by grabbing the box top off his desk and fitting it into place, sealing in the memories. “I expect Johnson told you that I don’t work here anymore.”

  “Yes. Right after I told him I’d let the FBI use me to set a trap for Lee, but only if you act as my bodyguard.”

  Gray had thought he was beyond surprise when it came to this case. Apparently, he was wrong. “Why me?”

  “Because you don’t play Johnson’s game.”

  That got his attention. “What game would that be?”

  She was still standing just inside the door, as though she might slip away at any moment. She didn’t leave, though, didn’t move a muscle. She just stood there, her eyes locked with his, as though she were trying to figure out how much to tell him, how much to trust him. After a short pause, she said, “The game where he does and says exactly the right thing, the defensible, by-the-book thing, even
when it’s the wrong choice under the circumstances. Let me guess…he wants to be governor some day.”

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure he’s got his sights set on Congress.” Gray was reluctantly impressed, though. Not too many people saw through the SAC’s act, at least not until they’d known him for a while. Moving around the desk, he crossed the room to stand very near her, close enough that he could see the flutter of her pulse at her throat. “You want me guarding you because my boss doesn’t like me. Any other reason? Not to pry, but I didn’t get the impression you liked me very much, either, especially after what happened with your father two years ago.”

  “That wasn’t your fault,” she said, surprising him again. At his startled look, she glanced away. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, for obvious reasons. It gave me an opportunity to think a few things through. One of the conclusions I came to was that the outcome would’ve been the same even if you’d been all sweetness and light in the interview. My father was furious with himself for not seeing Lee for what he was. He was in the process of being forcibly retired from his company because of his involvement in the bombings, and he was trying to deal with a boatload of guilt. The interrogation just brought all that to the forefront at once, and his heart couldn’t take it.”

  Something in her voice suggested that wasn’t the whole story, but Gray didn’t call her on it. Instead, he cleared his throat and waited for her to focus on him. Then he said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about how it played out.” He’d called the hospital to check on her father, but didn’t think she needed to know that. In a way it’d probably be better if she saw him as the enemy, especially since he was getting the idea that they hadn’t yet seen the last of each other. Still, he found himself asking, “How’s he doing?”

  That earned him a sharp look, but she must’ve seen that his question was sincere, because she answered civilly enough. “He had a second surgery a few months ago. I guess he’s doing okay now.”

  “You guess?” When she didn’t respond, he pressed, “Are you afraid that this is going to set his recovery back?” By this, he meant her imprisonment and the continued situation with Mawadi, and indicated as much by sketching a wave around his office, ending with his badge, which lay on his desk beside his resignation letter.

  She shook her head. “My parents moved away last year, said they were done with Colorado.” The way she said it made it sound like Colorado wasn’t the only thing they’d turned their backs on.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  They fell silent, and in the quiet he became aware of how close he and Mariah were standing. He could feel her warmth reaching out to him, making him itch to be even closer still, to lift a hand to her face and touch her. To kiss her.

  Before the mad impulse could supersede his better judgment, he said, “What, exactly, do you want from me?”

  “Johnson is going to arrange to have me hospitalized, and let it leak that I was found on the ridgeline. I want you to be in charge of surveillance, and when Lee comes for me, I want you to take care of him.”

  “Take care of him?” The idea of killing Mawadi in cold blood didn’t bother Gray nearly as much as it probably should have.

  “Get him off the streets and out of my life,” she said, which wasn’t really a clarification. “And in the process, I want you to do your best to keep me alive.” There was a new thread of steel in her voice when she said, “I know you’ll do whatever it takes—rules or no rules. Since that’s the way Lee thinks, it’s the only way you’re going to be able to take him down before he gets what he wants from me, and undoubtedly uses it to kill again. Your boss doesn’t understand that, which is why I want you involved.” She held out her hand. “What do you say?”

  He looked at her for a long moment, seeing her outstretched hand and the delicate bones of her wrist, which he could break one-handed if he wanted to. But though her bone structure might be more delicate than he’d remembered—made especially prominent now by her days in captivity—the woman herself was far stronger than he’d thought. He saw it in her eyes and heard it in her voice.

  The part of him that still spent the holidays with his family, knowing it mattered to them, said he should decline, that he should put Mariah into protective custody, stay on the job and do whatever he could—or rather whatever Johnson would let him do—to bring Lee Mawadi, al-Jihad and the others to justice through official means.

  But the other part of him, the part that awakened from nightmares drenched in sweat, seized with killing rage and the need for revenge—that part had him reaching out and gripping her hand. As he shook on it, he felt a twinge of guilt and regret, a premonition that pretty Mariah Shore would be the one to suffer the most from her choices.

  In the end, though, he knew that nothing else mattered but getting justice for the dead. He was a little surprised to find that she knew it, too.

  “Okay,” he said softly. “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter Four

  Over the next two days, Mariah learned that it was far easier to say “Use me as bait” than it was to actually be the so-called bait.

  Gray and the others had installed her in a square private hospital room that embodied the word drab. The furniture was cheap prefab; the upholstery, paint and uninspired wall art were all variations on the same theme of beige, mauve and mossy green. The single window overlooked the parking lot and was on a low floor, so she couldn’t even see beyond the neighboring buildings to the mountains in the distance. Not that she’d even seen much of the parking lot, because Gray had ordered her to stay in bed, aside from necessary trips to the small bathroom located in a walled-off corner of the room. They had no way of knowing the sophistication level of al-Jihad’s local network, so she had to play the part of an invalid.

  Round-the-clock guards stood outside her door, but they were mostly for the show of protective custody, and were on orders to let their vigilance slip now and then for a bathroom break or conversation. Mariah’s real security came from electronic surveillance that had been installed in secret by a team dressed to look like a maintenance crew. Thanks to them, she was constantly being monitored by both video and audio. Hello, Big Brother.

  Five years earlier, when she’d moved to New York, full of hope and enthusiasm, bursting with plans to launch herself into the world of fashion photography while becoming part of the “in” crowd, she might’ve seen the hidden cameras and microphones as no big deal; she’d tried out for that reality show, hadn’t she? But that period of her life had been a fluke, an aberration. She’d been trying to make herself into someone bright, glittering and interesting, someone very unlike the shy, uprooted loner she’d been throughout high school and college.

  And for a time, she’d succeeded.

  It had been during that time that she’d met Lee—or rather, he’d arranged to meet her. For the months he’d been courting her, she’d truly felt like the bright, glittering, interesting person she was trying to be. But she hadn’t been bright and interesting, she’d been desperate for attention, and so gullible that she’d bought his act right down to the last “I love you.” She’d thought it was her idea to move to Bear Claw in an effort to forge a better relationship with her parents, her idea for her father to help Lee get a job. In reality, she’d been played, and played badly.

  She hadn’t been glittery or interesting. Worse, she’d been stupid. In retrospect, it seemed ludicrous that she’d ever believed that a man like the one Lee had portrayed could have been interested in her, never mind being smitten, as he’d claimed to be. She simply wasn’t the type to inspire strong emotions in other people. Not her parents, not men, not anyone.

  Drifting in her hospital bed, dozing in that half-aware state between sleeping and waking, she thought of the hopes and dreams she’d brought into her marriage, and how Lee had extinguished them one by one.

  As if summoned by the memories, she heard his voice in her mind, low and beguiling. You’re going to help us whether
you like it or not, he’d whispered against her cheek, his breath feathering the hair at her temple as she’d lain bound and helpless, slipping into drugged oblivion. It’s simple, really, all you have to do is tell me where—

  “Deep thoughts?” Gray’s low, masculine voice said, breaking the reverie.

  Mariah jolted alert, yanking her attention to the doorway of her drab hospital room even as she scrambled to hold on to the memory. Or had it even been a memory? She wasn’t sure, didn’t know if it would help even if it had been real. Confusion churned through her, and it didn’t dissipate one iota at the sight of Gray standing there. If anything, her tension increased, not because she was afraid of him, or even because of the misplaced resentment she’d harbored against him for far too long.

  No, this tension was purely a product of the situation and the man.

  Deciding to keep the partially remembered whisper to herself for the moment, she shook her head and answered his question with a neutral, “Just resting.”

  His gray suit hung on him a little, disguising the broad shoulders, flat waist and strong legs she now knew were part of the package. He looked as though he’d lost weight since he’d bought the clothes, making her think that in the past he might have carried some softness that was no longer evident in his tough, honed frame. That same toughness edged the sharp planes of his face and lent intensity to his expression as he crossed the room and took the visitor’s chair beside her bed.

  Mariah was unable to keep herself from noting the smooth, almost feral grace of his actions. She was equally unable to squelch her body’s unexpectedly sharp yearn in his direction when he sat. She wanted to move closer, wanted to lean into his heat and steadying strength. Because she did, and because she knew she didn’t dare, she scooted away a few inches instead.

  Ever since he’d rescued her in soldier’s guise, she’d been unable to go back to thinking of him as the cold, uncaring man she’d thought he was before. If he’d been motivated solely by the needs of his job, he would have tried to capture Lee and Brisbane as they’d chased her from her cabin. Or he could’ve let them recapture her, waiting until al-Jihad arrived to make his move. Instead, he’d sheltered her with his own body and carried her down the mountain when she’d been unable to walk. And now he was doing everything in his power to keep her safe. Granted, that was part of the job—it was all part of the job—but she couldn’t help thinking there was something more there, something personal. Something that hummed in the air between them as silence lingered. Some of it was because they didn’t dare speak freely, due to all the FBI surveillance equipment, as well as the surveillance they assumed Lee and his terrorist colleagues were using. That meant they were careful to act as though he was nothing more to her than a federal agent assigned to the case. Not the man who’d saved her life, and not a bodyguard awaiting Lee’s next move.